As they urge you to pull together a Web site, pundits like to invoke the famous line from Field of Dreams: "If you build it, they will come." Sadly, that's not true. No matter how adept you are at building a Web site, no one will visit unless it's properly marketed. They can't come if they don't know it's there.

The trouble is, promoting a Web site is more difficult than ever. There's more competition, and you can't even be sure that your site will pop up on the popular search engines. Also, thanks to the recent backlash against spam, you can't rely on e-mail marketing as in years past.

When Bill Broadbent founded T-ShirtKing.com ( www.t-shirtking.com ) in 1998, he drove traffic in two ways: He set up an affiliate network (sites that receive a small fee for displaying links to T-Shirt King and generating click-throughs) and he sent out a weekly e-mail newsletter. Spam backlash has crippled the newsletterhis list of subscribers has dropped from 400,000 to 100,000 in just three yearsand it's also hampered his ability to sign up affiliates.

"To find affiliates, we would search the Web for sites that might work and then just e-mail their Webmasters," says Broadbent. "It worked great for years, but then Webmasters started calling it spam."

A significant amount of traffic comes through popular search engines like Google and Yahoo! If a seventies TV buff keyed "MASH T-Shirt" into Google, for instance, T-ShirtKing.com was typically among the first few search results. But as the Web expanded and competition grew, it disappeared from the ranks.

This is a typical story, but there are other options. The first, and probably the most effective, is "paid search." Instead of merely hoping that T-ShirtKing.com will show up in Google's primary list of results, Broadbent uses Google's AdWords program, paying the search engine to include his site as one of the "sponsored links" that show up at the top or along the side of the results page.

Like Broadbent, Eric Lituchy, founder and president of Delightful Deliveries ( www.delightfuldeliveries.com ), spends the bulk of his marketing budget on paid search. Unlike traditional advertising, he says, it doesn't eat into your bottom line unless it's working. You pay the search engine only if and when someone clicks on your sponsored link and visits your site

That said, you have to choose your sponsored links carefully. Broadbent pays Google 10 cents each time a sponsored link drives someone to his site, and if those clicks aren't converted into sales, he has a problem. "If you're paying a dime a click and you're selling a $20 item, your links have to be very targeted," he says. Generally, the site converts 2 to 4 percent of those clicks into sales. Anything less and the sponsored links wouldn't be worth it.

Another option is "site optimization." By controlling keyword metatags and other aspects of your site, you can drive it up the primary list of search engine results. This way, you avoid paid search and you're able to attract surfers who tend not to click on sponsored links. In addition to using paid search, Delightful Deliveries has had a fair amount of success with optimization.

Unfortunately, you'll need an outside firm to optimize your site, and according to Drew Sharma, director of the Boston-based Web design and marketing firm Mindfire Interactive, this could cost anywhere from a few hundred to $20,000 a month. Plus, there's no guarantee it will work.

You can still build an affiliate network, however, with help from several small-business services like Commission Junction ( www.cj.com ) and LinkShare ( www.linkshare.com ).

The most visible form of Web marketing is banner ads, but they are not the best option for small shops. "Banners are good for bigger companies," says Lituchy of Delightful Deliveries. "But you have to spend money to create the ads, not just to run them, and there's a lot of risk involved." Sharma recommends spending about 60 percent of your marketing budget on search (mostly paid search but a little site optimization), 20 to 30 percent on an affiliate network, and only about 10 to 20 percent on banner ads.

If your head is spinning, you might want to try Affinity Internet's ValueWeb service. For as little as $100 a month and a $100 initial setup fee, the company will do all site marketing for you. "You're assigned your own marketing executive," says Affinity CEO Peter Chambers. "He or she takes a look at your site and at your competitors' sites and does what needs to be done to get traffic." Mostly, this involves site optimization and paid search.

The company guarantees 10,000 impressions (when someone is presented with a link to your site) or 50 click-throughs each month, but most customers get more. The National Private Annuity Trust, a small business based in Northern Virginia, has been using ValueWeb since the early fall, and it's getting 11,000 click-throughs and 1,000 new customers a week.

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